Abstract
The paper discusses the degree gradation of verbs in German by the adverb sehr (very, very much). The main focus of the paper is on the gradation of change of state verbs and the interaction of degree gradation and telicity. It is argued that the gradability of telic change of state verbs supports the distinction between a standard and a maximum telos based on the analysis of Kearns 2007. A maximum telos is identical to a maximal scale value, while a standard telos marks a non-maximal degree. The general assumption is that a telos can be analyzed as a specified standard value. To maintain the analysis, additional data from Russian and French are provided which show that the gradability of change of state verbs depends on the kind of telos of the respective verb.
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- 1.
For different linguistic realizations of verb gradation e.g., by intonation, cf. Bolinger 1972.
- 2.
In contrast to English very, sehr can be used for degree gradation of adjectives as well as verbs. For differences between sehr as adjectival and sehr as verbal degree modificator cf. Ropertz 2001. In English a general degree adverb like sehr is missing, therefore it is not possible to provide a uniform translation of sehr in the examples throughout this paper.
- 3.
In Sect. 6.8 a distinction between two different types of degree gradation is introduced, depending on the kind of relationship between the gradation scale and the event.
- 4.
One way to express progressive in German is to use a periphrastic construction consisting of sein (to be), am (at, by), which is a contraction of the preposition an and the definite article, and a nominalized infinitive. In the glosses, I mark the single components of the construction and indicate the nominalization of the infinitive by the subscript Nom.
- 5.
For a formal definition of the homomorphic mapping cf. Caudal and Nicolas 2005, 293).
- 6.
- 7.
I am analyzing only perfective uses of change of state verbs, since in case of imperfective aspect the culmination condition is canceled, which alters the truth conditions of the predicate.
- 8.
The examples discussed in this section are taken from dataset collected in the project LO 4545/1 “Verbgraduierung” supported by the German Research Community and conducted by Sebastian Löbner.
- 9.
For an analysis of prefix verbs in German and the effect of prefixes and particles and the semantics of the verbs cf. Stiebels 1996.
- 10.
Throughout the paper I will use the notions relative standard telos and absolute standard telos to differentiate the cases in which standard and maximum telos are distinct (first case) or fall together (second case).
- 11.
The notion of a standard telos could also be used to explicate Borer’s notion of the term sub-culmination point. But such an analysis approximates to the endpoint approach, since the different telos cannot be defined with regard to the notion of homogeneity.
- 12.
It is an open question whether open scale accomplishments that are only related to a standard telos really exist.
- 13.
The examples in (27) are taken from the Russian National Corpus (http://www.ruscorpora.ru/en/index.html).
- 14.
In the Russian examples I have marked the case of the nouns in the glossed to indicate grammatical relations. Following abbreviations are used: Nom = Nominative, Acc = Accusative, Gen = Genitive, Inst = Instrumental and Prep = Prepositional.
- 15.
The examples are taken from the following sources: (28-a) http://cagey.livejournal.com/454951.html (04.08.2010), (28-b) http://turism.pp.ua/tags/%F1%E1%EE%F0/page/2/ (04.08.2010) and (28-c) http://medicinecedole.ru/188.php (04.08.2010).
- 16.
The examples in (32) are taken from a French online corpus (http://www.frantext.fr/).
- 17.
Example (33-a) is taken from http://projetbabel.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7922 (04.08.2010) and (33-b) is from http://www.france24.com/fr/20081125-je-pense-pas-quune-scission-ps-soit-possible-parti-socialiste?quicktabs_1=0 (04.08.2010).
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Acknowledgements
The research for this paper was supported by the German Science Foundation (DGF) grant FOR 600, Research Unit “Functional Concepts and Frames.” I would like to thank Adrian Czardybon, Thomas Gamerschlag, Wilhelm Geuder, Sebastian Löbner, Stefanie Schulze, the participants of the “Workshop on the Subatomic Semantics of Event Predicates” in Barcelona and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and Aurélien Jarry, Anja Latrouite, Nikolaj Skorolupov, Pavel Sirotkin and Anselm Terhalle for their help with the French and Russian data.
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Fleischhauer, J. (2013). Interaction of Telicity and Degree Gradation in Change of State Verbs. In: Arsenijević, B., Gehrke, B., Marín, R. (eds) Studies in the Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 93. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5983-1_6
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